1:00 a.m. - 2004-10-19
The Surreal Life
There is a surreal quality to my life these days that's been growing over the last six months. I find myself pausing sometimes and pinching myself, finding it hard to believe that this life I'm living is actually mine.
I'm sitting in my apartment, settled into my usual perch in the recliner, next to the balcony doors that have frosted over with the recent dumping of snow. I look outside and I no longer see my familiar back yard. It's been nearly a year since we left our old house, and I still wake up sometimes expecting to be there.
But since then, I've moved twice. I went home to visit my cat (and my parents, I guess) the other day, and my old bedroom has been completely turned into a guest room. It looks great - way better than it ever did when I lived there - but it makes me feel sort of like I never lived there at all. I only lived in that house for eight months, and it seems like half that time was spent either unpacking or packing.
My apartment feels like home now. I can drive here on auto pilot, although I still haven't quite decided which is the fastest way to go. I know where to find the scissors and the string, and I know what's in the fridge when I'm contemplating dinner. (I often don't want to eat any of it, but that's another issue entirely.)
We have magnetic poetry up on one wall now, adding an extra touch of geekiness to our already extremely geeky apartment. Pages from the dictionary and thesaurus hang above my chair, and the coffee table usually houses a mishmash of homework waiting to be marked by Diana (and occasionally me, being a helpful roommate), a pile of books, some cross stitching, and a bunch of knitting. Buffy DVDs are strewn around the room, and it would be very easy to get a sense of the two girls who live here with a thirty second glance at our living room.
I like that. My home has never before had so much of my own personality in it, and I like it that way. I like the fact that as I pass behind the couch I can arrange a little poem, or that I can watch three hours of Buffy with Diana while she cross stitches and I knit and we giggle over nothing. It's comfortable here. It's home.
But it isn't home for long. In another nine months, I'll be moving again, the third time in two years. That, perhaps, is the most surreal part. I can accept that I actually live in this cute apartment with my hilarious friend, and we have competent housecleaning skills and occasionally surprisingly decent cooking ability. I can admire our decorating job and appreciate the carefully arranged furniture.
The idea that I'm getting married in nine months, though, doesn't seem to have quite sunk in yet. I'm having a hard enough time wrapping my brain around the next week. The fact that I'm getting published at last is almost more than I can take; if I spend too much time thinking about the idea of having a husband and being a wife I often start to giggle, feeling like I've managed to pull the wool over the entire world's eyes and make them believe I'm an adult when I frequently don't feel like I ever really made it past twelve. But then I come home and clean the apartment and cook dinner and pay the bills and contemplate my future, and I realise that maybe I'm doing a pretty good job at being a grown up after all.
That doesn't mean it isn't a little surreal, though. When did I become a grown up anyway? Did I miss a memo?
